


Work It Down

by dereviannaya



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, F/M, Inspired by dietgaymags on tumblr, M/M, This was my peak, enjoy, kind of, now a senior, the cat represents jason, wrote this in 8th grade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dereviannaya/pseuds/dereviannaya
Summary: Redburn High is filled with bold personalities and tension to boot. A recently-dumped straight-A student, a slacking star pithcer, a cheerleading teacher's pet, a resilient clarinetist, a genius class president candidate, a cheerful aspiring cook, and a hypoallergenic siberian might just find the family they never knew they needed. And eat some pretzels along the way.
Relationships: Dr. Charlotte/Cordelia (Falsettos), Marvin/Trina (Falsettos) (former), Trina/Mendel Weisenbachfeld, Whizzer Brown/Marvin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Work It Down

**Author's Note:**

> this was written in 2017 at the height of the falsettos fandom.... warning: fever dream

Marvin could not believe this was happening. Especially in front of half the school. He wished the floor could just swallow him up already.

“This is the final straw, Marvin!” Trina, his girlfriend, yelled, looking livid. Her face was actually red with anger. Marvin cringed as some students gathered around them to see what all the commotion was. He really wished Trina didn’t have to do this in front of all their classmates, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Trina-”

“I don’t want to hear it!” She cut him off. Marvin swallowed.

“Can’t we do this somewhere else?” Trina’s eyes hardened and she glared. Her glare was cold. It could kill.

“No,” she said, “I’m sick of this, Marvin! You’re- you’re just a horrible boyfriend! You don’t pay attention, you care about stupid elections and your GPA more than me. You  _ forgot _ my birthday! And, honestly, this so-called ‘relationship’ isn’t going anywhere. We fight all the time, you never make time for me- you know what, this is over.” Marvin’s jaw dropped. He heard some people in the crowd around him gasp.

“ _ What _ ?”

“Marvin, this has been nothing but stress for both of us. I am not your mother! Why am I always fixing  _ your _ mistakes?” Trina crossed her arms. She didn’t look quite as angry anymore. Just irritated.

“Are you  _ breaking up _ with me?!” Marvin asked. He couldn’t believe this. They had been together for almost a year, and now she was breaking up with him? She was right about one thing; they  _ did _ fight a lot. But they always figured it out in the end. Or, rather, Marvin would do something stupid, Trina wouldn’t talk to him for a couple days, he’d apologize, and they’d argue about something else. He didn’t imagine they’d break up. Trina bit her lip, deep in thought.

“Maybe I  _ am _ !”

“Alright, fine! It’s over!” Marvin shouted.

“Fine!” Trina cried, turning on her heel and storming off in the direction of the band room.

The silence was deafening. Marvin just scowled at the back of Trina’s head as she marched off, down the hallway. No one said a word. Marvin wasn’t sure what everyone was still doing here. School was over. It had been, for about five minutes. Which meant-

“Uh, Marvin, we’ve got quiz bowl practice.” Mendel seemed to appear out of nowhere, smiling sheepishly. For someone who had been Marvin’s friend since middle school, he was  _ really _ lousy at comforting him. Marvin didn’t know why the guy wanted to be a psychiatrist. He was horrible at advice.

Marvin brought a hand to his forehead and began to rub at his eyes, muttering to himself. “Mendel, for all the time you spend in the guidance counselor’s office, I’d hope you were a little more helpful in times like these.” 

The crowd, now bored that the tension had dissipated, began to return to normal, their five minutes of excitement over. Mendel was wringing his hands, but still had that dumb smile plastered across his face.

“It’s not like I’m getting tutored in there,” Mendel said quickly, and then tried to nudge Marvin in the direction of an old, unused classroom that served as the practice room for the Redburn High Quiz Bowl team, and Marvin slowly let himself be dragged off.

They had to go up a flight of stairs and cross the upper level, giving Marvin plenty of time to mull over what had just happened. Trina had never been a girl with a temper, and had never seemed explicitly pissed off at anything Marvin had ever done. Marvin had thought he was a great boyfriend, or he at least thought that Trina liked him, but judging by what she said, she’d been having those thoughts for a long time.

“Marvin, come on,” Mendel said quietly, noticing Marvin’s glazed-over expression. “Think about it: when was the last time you ever had so much as a  _ conversation  _ with Trina?”

Marvin flared up and prepared to bark out a detailed list of every recent social interaction he’d had with Trina, but as he tried to think of anything, he fell flat. His jaw was slack, hanging open like he was in shock. Which, at this point, he was. He realized that Mendel was right. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just had a normal conversation with Trina, one that wasn’t forced or devolved into them fighting. 

Mendel just nodded at Marvin’s silence. “Marv, I don’t think you and Trina were ever actually…” He tugged at his collar and looked away, then moved onto fiddling with the edges of his sleeves, which were always upturned. “Together.”

“How do you  _ know that _ ?” Marvin whined, taking the stairs three at a time. 

“Are you even sad?”

Marvin stopped, six stairs above Mendel, and looked down at him. 

“What?”

“Are you even sad?” Mendel repeated, looking Marvin in the eye.

Marvin was silent.  _ Am I even  _ sad _?  _ He thought to himself. “Of course I am!” He said aloud, but it was obvious it was more to convince himself than Mendel. “I’m…” He looked away, and tried to remember the last time he’d ever  _ felt  _ anything with Trina. He cared about her, sure, but how much? They’d been friends during freshman year, and had only gotten together a month or two into sophomore year. Did anything really change?

“What’s your anniversary?” Asked Mendel.

All Marvin could do was stare back. He wasn’t even going to try to remember. Trina probably knew, and she probably knew he wasn’t going to remember if it ever passed.  _ I guess I won’t have to worry about that now _ .

“Do you even feel that different? Like, are you feeling anything other than shock right now?” Mendel pressed, and Marvin frowned. Mendel had never been good at trying to help Marvin with his problems, despite how close they were, but now, when the conversation was about his  _ ex _ -girlfriend, he was suddenly good at it?

“No,” Marvin whispered. He’d never given much thought to his first breakup, but he thought it would be a helluva lot more meaningful than Trina breaking up with him in a school hallway and then instantly leaving. He’d expected tears, more shouting, maybe a broken heart, but this? This was basically nothing. This basically felt like he’d grown apart from an acquaintance. 

_ That’s not my fault _ , Marvin assured himself.  _ We just weren’t compatible. It’s not like there’s anything I could’ve done _ .

“Right,” Mendel nodded, and started to climb the stairs again. “We’ve got a new member of the team, by the way, and I’m sure you’ll be excited to meet him.”

Marvin raised an eyebrow and reached the top of the stairs, walking the familiar route to the unused practice classroom. “A new teammate? Mendel, there’s only five people allowed on a team-”

“Ah!” Mendel quieted Marvin with an ecstatic wave of his wrist. “You’ll see, Marv, just come on.” He started to move faster, nearly jogging towards the classroom, and Marvin kept up with him despite his annoyance. “I’ve got cheer practice after this, come on!”

“You couldn’t have mentioned that sooner?” Marvin laughed.

By the time they got into practice, they were the last two team members there, but their usual moderator, Mrs. Lauper wasn’t in yet. Before Marvin had a chance to ask where she was, he fixed his eyes on what was sitting on the teacher’s desk.

“You got a CAT!” Marvin yelled excitedly, dropping his bag and walking over to the cat. It had fluffy gray-brown fur with black stripes running over its body, and olive green eyes. Marvin ran his hand gently along the cat’s back, discovering its fur was incredibly soft. The cat began to purr.

Mendel, the proud parent that he was, drifted over to the desk and sat in the chair, grinning from ear to ear. “His name’s Tony, he’s two years old, and I picked him up from the shelter.”

“The staff just lets you bring him wherever you want?” Marvin asked, not taking his eyes off of Tony. “What about the kids that are allergic?”

“Siberians are hypoallergenic,” Mendel explained. “Sure, that doesn’t guarantee that nobody’s gonna be bothered by him, but the nurse told me there’s nobody that’s severely allergic anyways. And it doesn’t help that all of the staff loves me to death.”

Spending his lunches in the guidance counselor’s office was an apparent gateway into a kid getting his own pass to the teacher’s lounge, which Mendel was immensely proud of and bragged about at every opportunity.

At that moment, Mrs. Lauper opened the door and came into the classroom, carrying a coffee cup in one hand and a donut in the other. Mrs. Lauper frequently left campus to go get snacks, and on rare occasions would bring the students back some. 

“Out of my chair, Mendel. Tony, you can stay,” She said, setting her coffee cup down and reaching out to pet Tony. “Mr. Rosenberg,” She turned to address Marvin, “Would you read for us?”

Marvin blinked slowly. Trina usually read for the quiz bowl in their more serious practices, held on Thursdays. That meant he’d have to face her again tomorrow. “Yeah, sure, I’ll read.”

Practice went smoothly, with Tony only interrupting once with a very loud meow after Marvin asked a question about the chemical process that broke down a compound when it came into contact with water. They counted it as a correct answer.

In addition to his quiz bowl efforts, Marvin was also the chief editor of the Redburn High newspaper, officially named the Redburn Report; he took his job extremely seriously. He’d had it ever since sophomore year, when the old editor graduated, and was known by everybody that worked on the newspaper as a perfectionist that wouldn’t let the paper run until everything was perfect. They sent out the newspaper Friday morning, and it was nearly done, but Marvin preferred to spend Thursday only worrying about editing the paper, and not about finishing any articles or columns.

Mendel claimed that he had a whole queue of teachers lined up to meet Tony, so he booked it with the cat in tow right as quiz bowl practice finished to go and ‘give the people what they want’. 

Marvin headed to the newspaper editing room, which doubled as the Photography classroom when school was in session, and found a dear friend of his, Charlotte Dubois, sitting at a computer, the most recent draft of the newspaper pulled up on the editing program they used, Eureka. 

“Marvin!” Charlotte called in greeting, not even turning around. She claimed she could recognize Marvin’s footsteps, which Marvin thought was ridiculous, but he didn’t try to argue with her about it. “How are you?”

Marvin briefly wondered if he should tell her about Trina, but then realized that she definitely already knew. Charlotte’s girlfriend, Cordelia Pipes, seemed to know everything about everybody. She had to have known at least four people that were in the crowd surrounding the scene they made that afternoon.

“I’m great, Lottie,” Marvin said, and it wasn’t a lie. He tossed his bag carelessly onto a chair and sat down next to Charlotte, loading up Eureka. “How are you?”

Charlotte stretched her clicking wrist in slow circles, popping it. “Cordelia made me another set of buttons and T-Shirts. Not sure why, she’s the only one that ever wears the shirts.”

Both Marvin and Charlotte were running for student president. Marvin was currently running for re-election, while Charlotte was running for her second year in a row. She’d only lost to Marvin last year by a handful of votes, so she was stepping up her campaign this year. In the eyes of her girlfriend, that meant whipping out her at-home button maker and getting to work designing every piece of merch she could for Charlotte’s campaign. 

“That’s true,” Conceded Marvin. He didn’t have the buttons or the hats or the T-Shirts, but he did have a couple posters and stickers that Mendel, his ever loyal campaign manager, had made and hung up around school for him. He even claimed he put a ‘RE-ELECT MARVIN ROSENBERG’ sticker on the teachers’ fridge, mostly just to mention he has access to the teachers’ fridge. “She makes cute designs, though.”

Charlotte smiled and laughed softly, moving an image of the Redburn Raiders, the school’s football team, a few centimeters to the left. She scrolled down a few pages and frowned. “Marv, look at this,” She said, and Marvin looked up and over at her screen. He saw she’d paused on one of their newest columns,  _ The Whizz Biz _ . There were two sentences written in what was supposed to be a four paragraph piece. 

That column was run by Whizzer Brown, who was most notably the best pitcher on Redburn High’s baseball team, the Devils. His column was mostly just giving advice to freshmen, and he was supposed to be writing about how to balance their extracurriculars and regular classes, despite being one of the worst role models Marvin knew.

“That isn’t done!” Charlotte exclaimed. “I’ll have to find him and get him in here later. He’s had to write this column for, what, three weeks? It’s not even baseball season, so what does he even do?”

Marvin and Whizzer were fine enough friends, first meeting in sophomore year when they were in the same English class. Marvin distinctly remembered he never had his essays in on time, but he always made reading them a nearly theatrical performance. With more concern, Marvin remembered last baseball season, when he’d had the thought that the Devils baseball uniform had suited Whizzer  _ really well. _

“If he doesn’t get it in by Friday, we’ll just cut it. He won’t be  _ that  _ upset.”

A light, three-tapping knock sounded at the door, and both Marvin and Charlotte instantly recognized it as Cordelia. She was the only person they knew who knocked on classroom doors. She opened the door gently and stuck her head in, her face lighting up when she saw Charlotte.

“Hi!” She said, crossing the room to give Charlotte a quick kiss. She was dressed in a “Vote for Charlotte Dubois!” T-Shirt, where the letters were all swirly and leaned into one another in a very pleasing way. “I dropped off those buttons at my locker, by the way.”

“Thank you, love,” Charlotte said. She had this certain kind of completely unrestrained beaming that only ever seemed to happen when Cordelia was around. It was one of the things that made Marvin’s heart melt the most.

Cordelia looked at Marvin and her gaze instantly softened. She rubbed his shoulder reassuringly. “You doing alright?” She asked, the tone of her voice suddenly very heavy. “I always have tissues in my backpack, if you ever need one.”

“Thank you, really, but I’m fine,” Marvin said. When Cordelia frowned, he pressed, “No, really! I didn’t even cry or anything!”

Now Charlotte was giving him an odd look. “You didn’t cry, Marv?”

“Weren’t you two together for, like, a year?” Cordelia asked, concern evident in her voice. 

“We…” Marvin’s voice died in his throat.  _ Shouldn’t I have cried? _

He was saved from having to think of some excuse by a rich, steady voice came over the school’s loudspeaker. That voice was instantly recognizable by any Redburn student as Principal Finn, the school’s generally kind chief authority figure. Mendel has been out to brunch with him a whopping four times. 

“Attention, Redburn students and faculty. Please take note that Cross Country practice is cancelled for the rest of the week due to unforeseen health complications with Coach Lopez.” There was some uncomfortable feedback that could only be Principal Finn moving the mic across a table, and then Vice Principal Lapine’s adenoidal voice apologized for the inconvenience. 

Before Marvin had to return to uncomfortably discussing Trina with his friends, the door opened again this time, but instead of a gentle knock, it slammed open and hit the doorstopper.

Mendel burst into the room, Tony draped around his shoulders like a snake. His bag was gone and he was looking more frantic than normal. “I HAVE CHEERLEADING PRACTICE!” He announced unnecessarily loudly.

Marvin and Charlotte swiveled around to stare at him.

“Why the hell are you  _ here _ , honey?” Charlotte asked, exasperated. Cordelia moved away from Marvin and shifted her focus onto Mendel.

“I was on my way here, and I just remembered when I walked through the door,” Mendel spoke so quickly Marvin nearly couldn’t pick up what he was saying. “Marv, come with me! You’re the class president, and your GPA is like a bazillion, so it won’t matter that I’m late!”

“Mendel, we’re both cheerleaders,” Cordelia said, but she didn’t sound the least bit panicked. “It’s in ten minutes, and the gym is two minutes away, what’s the hurry?”

“ _ en minutes _ ?” Mendel asked her in disbelief, and then looked down at his watch. “Oh, yeah, ten minutes. My internal clock was wrong, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marvin said. “How about we just all go? The newspaper will still be here, and really the only left to finish is Whizzer’s column, which will get done. Charlotte, I’m sure you’ll wanna support Cordelia?”

Before Charlotte could answer, Mendel butted in. “ _ And  _ watch Tony?” He asked in what seemed to be a pleading matter. As if on cue, Tony  _ mrrowed _ , prompting an  _ awww  _ from Marvin and Cordelia. Charlotte merely eyed the cat suspiciously. 

“Sure thing, Mendel,” She said after a moment. “Let’s go.”

Marvin and Charlotte turned off their monitors and grabbed their backpacks, and headed out the door in the direction of the gym. Miraculously, Tony seemed to stay perfectly on Mendel’s shoulders, even as he walked.

As they were entering the gym, Cordelia asked, “So Mendel, is Tony gonna be the top of our pyramid?”


End file.
